ArticleEuropean journal of applied physiology2012
Comparison of the metabolic energy cost of overground and treadmill walking in older adults.
Article in European journal of applied physiology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 58 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Relationship Between Walking Speed and the Energetic Cost of Walking in Persons With Multiple Sclerosis and Healthy Controls: A Systematic Review.Neurorehabilitation and neural repair · 2021Pooled it
- The effects of an extemporaneous speech dual-task on center of pressure displacement and velocity in older adults.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Use Treadmills with Caution: Walking Energy Expenditure and Metabolic Cost Are Elevated Compared to Overground Across Multiple Speeds in Healthy Young Adults.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2026Article
- Estimation of walking energy expenditure using a single sacrum-mounted IMU based on biomechanically-informed machine learning.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Determination of moderate walking intensity using step rate and VOBMC public health · 2024Article
- Comparative study of young-old and old-old people using functional evaluation, gait characteristics, and cardiopulmonary metabolic energy consumption.BMC geriatrics · 2023Observational
- Autonomous Control of Music to Retrain Walking After Stroke.Neurorehabilitation and neural repair · 2023Article
- Multiple routes to help you roam: A comparison of training interventions to improve cognitive-motor dual-tasking in healthy older adults.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2022Article
- Wearable Assistive Robotics: A Perspective on Current Challenges and Future Trends.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Outside testing of wearable robots for gait assistance shows a higher metabolic benefit than testing on treadmills.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Comparison of energy expenditure and substrate metabolism during overground and motorized treadmill running in Chinese middle-aged women.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Lower limb joint motion and muscle force in treadmill and over-ground exercise.Biomedical engineering online · 2019Article
- Gait training using a robotic hip exoskeleton improves metabolic gait efficiency in the elderly.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Energy Impairments in Older Adults With Low Back Pain and Radiculopathy: A Matched Case-Control Study.Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation · 2018Article
- Validation of wearable visual feedback for retraining foot progression angle using inertial sensors and an augmented reality headset.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2018Article
- Effect of parameter selection on entropy calculation for long walking trials.Gait & posture · 2018Article
- Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Walk with Altered Step Time and Step Width Variability as Compared with Healthy Control Subjects.Annals of the American Thoracic Society · 2017Article
- Relationships between lower body strength and the energy cost of treadmill walking in a cohort of healthy older adults: a cross-sectional analysis.European journal of applied physiology · 2017Article
- Understanding walking activity in multiple sclerosis: step count, walking intensity and uninterrupted walking activity duration related to degree of disability.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2016Article
- Validity of treadmill- and track-based individual calibration methods for estimating free-living walking speed and VO2 using the Actigraph accelerometer.BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We assessed whether the metabolic energy cost of walking was higher when measured overground or on a treadmill in a population of healthy older adults. We also assessed the association between the two testing modes. Participants (n = 20, 14 men and 6 women aged between 65 and 83 years of age) were randomly divided into two groups. Half of them went through the overground-treadmill sequence while the other half did the opposite order. A familiarization visit was held for each participant prior to the actual testing. For both modes of testing, five walking speeds were experimented (0.67, 0.89, 1.11, 1.33 and 1.67 m s(-1)). Oxygen uptake was monitored for all walking speeds. We found a significant difference between treadmill and track metabolic energy cost of walking, whatever the walking speed. The results show that walking on the treadmill requires more metabolic energy than walking overground for all experimental speeds (P < 0.05). The association between both measures was low to moderate (0.17 < ICC < 0.65), and the standard error of measurement represented 6.9-15.7% of the average value. These data indicate that metabolic energy cost of walking results from a treadmill test does not necessarily apply in daily overground activities. Interventions aiming at reducing the metabolic energy cost of walking should be assessed with the same mode as it was proposed during the intervention. If the treadmill mode is necessary for any purposes, functional overground walking tests should be implemented to obtain a more complete and specific evaluation.
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